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Pregnancy Update Week 8

Woohoo! We made it to 8 weeks pregnant! We saw our little bug and we had our first midwife appointment. What a great week!

It really looks like nothing in this picture, but it definitely looked like a baby on the live video feed. The ultrasound technician did her job in private for about 20 minutes, and then my wife came in and we both got a very brief (like 1 minute) glimpse of the little thing wiggling and the little heart flickering. There is now a 95% chance that this little bug will continue to grow into a healthy baby.

This week we also got a lot more purging and organizing done in the house. However, somehow the future baby room is even more full and messy now than when we started.

Yesterday my wife went out to get some groceries and came home with these:

It made me so happy!! Our first purchases for baby were a newborn hipster plaid shirt and a Canadiana wildlife onesie. Couldn’t be more proud of my wife’s baby-fashion choices.

To focus on the negative for a bit… My fatigue has been getting me down. I have been too tired to focus on work, and when I’m not napping, I’m sitting slouched on the couch mind-napping. Because I have all this time to work from home (3 or 4 days a week now), I feel like I should be hyper-productive because there are no distractions. I could start working while still in bed at 6 O’Clock in the morning, like I used to do on my work-from-home days… But instead I sleep in until 8, make my way downstairs to the couch, sit and stare at the wall for half an hour trying to will the nausea to go away, make breakfast, watch youtube while I eat it, and then I usually take a nap until 10 or 11. I feel like an absolutely useless excuse for a human.

I told my grandma the news that she would be a great grandmother, and her response was to laugh like it was a joke. She was our flower granny at our wedding and has always been supportive of our relationship, but I guess the generation she comes from has never considered how two women might have a baby together. After laughing, when I remained silent, she said “how is that possible?” Right off the bat I had to explain that we used a sperm donor, and then she started asking a bunch of questions about the donor – is he handsome, is he smart, what is his job… I don’t like these questions because I don’t want to feel like I am having this child “with” our donor. I don’t want to hear that someone’s first thought is who the donor is, not how excited my wife and I are to be moms-to-be. Eventually my grandma said “congratulations to you both”, which I know is a lot more accepting and kind than a lot of grandparents would be, so I still count myself lucky.

I have SO MANY SYMPTOMS, and I am soaking them all up. I’m so excited and fortunate to be able to experience pregnancy.

Bodily Experiences This Week

Fatigue. And feeling bad about myself for it.

Nausea or queasiness that comes and goes.

Threw up for the first time! Yay! I was on the phone with my mom when I started barfing and she said “Pardon? I didn’t hear you.” And I said “that was me barfing.” Something in the veg lo mein I was cooking suddenly hit my gag reflex.

Insomnia. I got very little sleep the last two nights, due to all-night nausea.

Bloody nose.

Dizziness

Increased sex drive, but decreased sex having. I feel like I want it more, but by the time evening rolls around I am totally pooped, and feel nauseous, bloated and crampy.

Emotions. I cry over 90% of the videos I see on Facebook, and I miss my wife so much throughout the day that my heart hurts. All I want to do is cuddle with her day and in and day out. I feel overwhelming love and gratitude for my wife and my life.

Cramping. Just mild but fairly constant this week. It feels just like I have my period.

Baby bloat (AKA showing). I know it is too early to be “showing” with an actual “baby bump”. But we have been taking bump shots since week 6 and I am pretty sure I see change. Perhaps I’m just growing in fat stores, or perhaps I’m just getting more and more bloat build-up each week, but there is definitely something there. Makes me excited. Grow baby, grow!

Baby this week

Size of a raspberry, weight of a paperclip.

Limb Development: No more tail. Wrists and elbows can flex, and hands can touch across the chest. Fingers and toes are losing the last of their webbing this week.

Face Development: EYE COLOUR! Retinas have some pigment. The upper lip, tip of the nose, and tiny tongue with tiny taste buds are forming.

Sex Development: Precursors to external genitalia are beginning to develop, although this process takes a while to complete.

My goal this week: Start exercising. I am a couch potato, but I want an unmedicated home birth, so I better get my body in better condition… I just hate exercise so much…

7 thoughts on “Pregnancy Update Week 8”

Boy, we are having parallel pregnancies! My grandma had almost the exact same reactions. She ended up focusing on how she doesn’t know whether to knit a pink or blue blanket, because we aren’t going to find out gender. I figured that was a healthy place for her to fixate…

Haha the perspectives of that generation sure makes our own generation seem progressive! We won’t be revealing our baby’s gender either, and I anticipate hearing a lot of the same stresses from my older family members 😉

My partner’s grandma had a really similar reaction – and asked lots of questions about the donor. She was totally scandalized when we said that the insemination didn’t happen at a clinic – she was like, “is that even LEGAL?”

If it helps at all, my midwife says she never gets on pregnant women about diet or exercise until the second trimester (unless there’s a really important medical reason to do so) because the first tri is all about surviving. We’re hitting diet and exercise hard now since I got my hemoglobin A1C results back and they’re on the high end, but I’m feeling so much better than I was 6 weeks ago that I can almost enjoy the exercise (and even meals sometimes now!)

Thanks, it does help to hear that! Actually my midwife said the same. But when my wife reads pregnancy brochures and books in bed in the evening she reads the parts about importance of exercise out loud 😉 rubbing it in. My first goal is to start doing just few squats every day. It’ll take like 30 seconds and then i can sit down again!